The Long Midnight Of Barney Thomson

by Douglas Lindsay

  'I know it sounds hard to believe,' said Barney, 'but they were accidents. Both of them.'

  Holdall nodded, smiled. 'You're right, it is hard to believe.'

  There was a small noise behind Barney. A low groan. A wraith. The two of them turned. Jobson was leaning up on one arm, gun waving in his hand. It was difficult to tell which one of the two he was aiming at, and there was no time for anything other than the initial surprise.

  The gun went off.

  The shot caught Holdall full in the throat. He slumped back, his body a tangle of arms and legs on the rocks, finally dead.

  Jobson aimed unsteadily at Barney, the gun still meandering from side to side. Barney could do nothing, feet of clay. Closed his eyes.

  Again, the gun went off. The final explosion of noise in the night, and Jobson collapsed back onto the stones, his final effort.

  Barney opened his eyes. It had been a wild shot, fired off into the cavernous darkness of night. He walked over gingerly, stood beside Jobson. Kicked at him gently, bent over to feel his pulse. He was no doctor, but he knew this. Jobson was dead.

  Barney looked out over the water. It was difficult to see more than a few yards across the loch; thick mist, thick rain. He shivered in the cold, was once again aware of the clinging dampness of his clothes.

  Go and check on the body you disposed of, that was what The Voice had told him on the phone. Well, he'd done it. He'd looked out over the loch and he knew Chris was still there.

  Dead and buried, and the secret had just died with the four policemen on the lochside.

  He swallowed, shivered again, and turned towards his car. It was time to go home.

  Epilogue

  The cold weather had come earlier to Glasgow than usual, and although it was only the beginning of November, there was already a sprinkling of snow on the ground. However, it was unlikely it would last, as the cold freshness of night had given way to a harsh and bitter wind, bringing low cloud and drizzle.

  In the shop there was a comfortable warmth, the gentle sounds of hair flopping quietly to the floor, easy chatter between barber and customer. There were three chairs being worked, and five people waiting, having succumbed to their anticipatory trepidation, along the bench.

  Barney was on the window chair, as he had been for eight months, cutting with his now legendary verve and panache. Next to him was Arnie Braithwaite, as steady and unspectacular as ever. Then there was an empty chair, and at the end a young lad who was the only person whom James Henderson had been able to get to replace himself. The shop had a grotesque reputation to live down after the events of the previous spring, and it had been difficult for James to find someone willing to come and work there.

  In the end he'd settled for a twenty-one year old lad named Chip Ripkin, fresh from Ontario State Barber University. His hands were erratic, his style occasionally wayward. Some might have said he was the Marlon Brando of the shop, but even at his best he could never achieve that level of intensity. He could be great and he could be dreadful, but never was he magnificent and never would he produce the hair of kings.

  No, if you were looking for that in the area, there was only one barber; one man; one pair of scissors. Some were saying that he was giving the best haircuts in Europe – although there was always someone else to point out how easy that was, as the second you crossed the channel you were accosted by limp-wristed, rubber-lipped French faggots, brandishing hair-dryers and family-sized cans of mousse. However, whatever his merits on the European stage, there was no denying that Barney Thomson was cutting hair like a dream. There were few who had tied it to the time when Wullie had been murdered and Chris had fled from Glasgow, although it had been noticed by one or two. Not that they minded or commented to anyone – they were all just happy to be able to get their hair cut by a man whose prowess was becoming legend. If Mohammed Ali had cut George Foreman's hair in Zaire in 1974, they were saying, this is how he would have done it.

  Barney had walked away from the scene at the loch, stunned and disbelieving. He hadn't been sure that there would be no one else from the police to suspect him; had spent weeks waiting for them to turn up at the shop, or at his house, but it had never happened. Attention had been distracted from the serial murder case by the horrific – and as far as the press had been concerned, singularly impressive – events at Loch Lubnaig. Then, as attention had shifted back to catching the murderer, there had been more sightings of Chris Porter in London, and even, Barney had been delighted to see, in a small town near Brussels. It had all been more than he could have dreamed of. Now here he was, eight months later, cutting hair like the British conquered colonies of pygmies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in charge of the day to day running of the shop.

  Of the five people sitting along the wall waiting to get their hair cut, he could be pretty sure that at least three of them would be waiting for him, and possibly all five.

  Consequently, he now cut hair as slowly as he could, making as much inconsequential chatter as he could manage along the way. Just because all these bastards were coming to him now, didn't mean that he'd forgotten the resentment of the past twenty years. It was a small gesture, but it was all he could do to make them pay. He hurried for no man, and every man waited on him.

  Caught sight of himself in the mirror, felt pleased at how good he was looking these days. There was a light in his eye that hadn't been there since he'd first picked up a pair of scissors.

  He turned his attention back to his customer. It had been slightly tricky to start with. A young Arab lad had come in, asking for an Anwar Sadat '67, a haircut of which Barney had no conception. The Anwar Sadat 'Camp David' was one of his old specialities, but this had been new to him. However, it turned out to be the same haircut under a different name. Piece of cake. And now he was slowly making his way through it, taking as long as possible around the ears, even though he could have done them in under twenty seconds, such was his new-found skill and confidence.

  'Did you know,' he said to the chap, deciding that although he was going slowly, he wasn't going quite slowly enough, 'that the average male life expectancy in Russia is fifty-nine? What d'you make of that, eh? Fifty-nine!'

  Kazeem Al-Sahel smiled, trying to look interested. He had read this stuff in a newspaper a few months earlier. Barney was probably going to mention the abortion rate next. 'You want an Anwar Sadat '67?' they had said to him in Cairo. 'Go to Barney Thomson. But be prepared to wait. And be bored shitless, be prepared to be bored shitless.'

  'And you know, there are twice as many recorded abortions as there are births. And that's recorded abortions, mind. Jings knows how many actual ones there are.' Shook his head, waved the scissors about in the air a little. 'That not amazing? You wouldn't have thought it, now, would you? These folk can put people in space, after all.'

  Kazeem smiled, thought about the weather. They had told him it would be cold but this place was incredible.

  'But I'll tell you something. The life expectancy might be fifty-nine and all that, but have you noticed the age of all they senior politicians, eh? There's none of them died at fifty-nine, that's for sure. And you know why, don't you? Because they'll all get perfectly good medical facilities, won't they now? Aye, bloody right they will, while all their people are dying at fifty-nine. And that's just the average mind. Think how many must be dying younger than that.'

  Kazeem affected a serious face, nodded in agreement again. This was unbelievable; but as he studied the progress of the haircut in the mirror, he had to admit that it was worth it. With hair like this he could get the pick of the babes in all the seedy bars in Alexandria.

  A seat was pushed back and to Barney's right Chip's customer stood up, started fishing around in his pocket for some money. He had been given a beautiful, regulation, geometrically precise, US Marine haircut. Barney smiled, wondering if it had been requested. Assumed otherwise and that Chip had had to fall back on one of the old safety nets.

  The man walked out looking reas
onably unhappy, although it could have been because of the rain and wind he was just about to face. Chip turned to the customer at the head of the queue.

  'All right, mate, you're up next.'

  The man shook his head, nodded at Barney. 'That's ok, thanks, I'll wait for this fellow here.'

  'Sure,' said Chip, unconcerned. He moved onto the next and then the next until he had worked his way down the line. All of them were waiting for Barney. He shrugged, sat down in his chair, put his feet up on the counter, and lifted a copy of a two-month old Toronto Sun which his mother had just sent to him. It seemed a man in Flin Flon, Manitoba had transmogrified himself into a lizard and couldn't change back.

  Barney looked along the array of men waiting on him, allowing himself an even bigger smile. This was what he'd always wanted. Recognised a few of them as blokes who would have previously waited for Chris or Wullie at his expense, consciously made the effort to slow down even more. He had made a good job of that ear he'd just finished, but perhaps he should just go over it again. If he malingered properly, he could take nearly forty-five minutes over this particular haircut.

  Snipped at an invisible hair, stood back to see how much of a difference it made to the overall shape of the head. As he did so, he spotted another few invisible hairs he still had to remove. This could indeed take a while after all, he thought to himself.

  *

  The young man picked up a flat stone, skimmed it across the surface of the water. It bounced five or six times, came to a stop, rested for a fraction of a second on the surface, sank. He looked at it for a while, then picked up another stone, threw it at the wrong angle, watched it plunge straight into the water.

  He turned, started to wander along the shore of the loch. The hills rose up on the other side, the early winter snow beginning to show on the top of them. Around him, large branches lay on the rocky shore, evidence of the devastation caused by the bad storms of two days earlier.

  He pulled his jacket collar up, close around his neck against the biting wind, looked at the sky. It was going to be raining soon, judging by the great swathes of low cloud beginning to sweep across from the west.

  His mind was not on the weather, however. He was too busy thinking about Amanda Bagel – the girl who'd just dumped him for some big city shopfitter from Stirling. He had turned up in the bar in Callander one night with his fake Gucci watch, a sunbed tan and a couple of twenties in his wallet, and she'd fallen for him like he'd been Brad Pitt. God, they'd made him look stupid.

  He was walking his dog, an enormous smiley Labrador called Bond, attempting to tell himself that it wasn't all that important. It would mean nothing in a couple of months. That was right, of course, but it was still difficult not to feel stupid and hurt. Particularly the way they had laughed at his Tie A Yellow Ribbon during the karaoke.

  He lifted a large stone – short of a boulder but still heavy – and heaved it into the water. It hit with a satisfyingly loud splash, and he had to jump out of the way of the spray.

  Away along the shore, Bond started barking. He spent most of his life barking, the big fella, but now it was with a little more gusto. He was pulling at a black bag, jumping around excitedly, frantically wagging his tail.

  Andrew Marshall slowly walked along the shore towards him. He wasn't too interested, knew that Bond would bark excitedly if he found a prostitute in Bangkok.

  As he approached, the dog sat down on the rocks beside the large, bound black plastic bags; tail going furiously, enormous grin on his face. Marshall stopped, patted Bond on the head.

  'Good boy, Bond, what have you found here?'

  Looked down at the large package, now loosely bound with thin rope. Didn't want to touch it with his hands. Kicked at it but it refused to reveal its secrets. Kicked harder.

  The bag opened slightly, and then in slow motion an arm fell out, plopping onto the stones. Blue, deteriorated skin, but it was human.

  Marshall stared at it for a second or two, then stepped back. Horror ran wild across his face. Wasn't thinking of Amanda Bagel anymore. Turned away and started to vomit heavily onto the damp stones.

  On seeing the product of his discovery – such a magnificent reaction – Bond went into another frantic dance, bouncing around in circles, yapping loudly, his tail swirling extravagantly in the chill November air.

  ***

  About the author

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